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It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

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It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

By: Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
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About this listen

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the authors of the New York Times bestseller Rework, are back with a manifesto to combat all your modern workplace worries and fears.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work is a direct successor to Rework, the instant bestseller that showed readers a new path to working effectively. Now Fried and Heinemeier Hansson have returned with a new strategy for the ideal company culture – what they call “the calm company”. It is a direct attack on the chaos, anxiety and stress that plagues millions of workplaces and billions of people working their day jobs.

Working to breaking point with long hours, excessive business, and a lack of sleep have become a badge of honour for many people these days, when it should be a mark of stupidity. This isn’t just a problem for large organisations; individuals, contractors and solopreneurs are burning themselves out in the very same way. As the authors reveal, the answer isn’t more hours. Rather, it’s less waste and fewer things that induce distraction, always-on anxiety and stress.

It is time to stop celebrating crazy and start celebrating calm.

©2018 Jason Fried (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers Career Success Employment Personal Development Personal Success Stress Management Time Management Career Business

Critic reviews

!This book is funny, well written and iconoclastic and by far the best thing on management published this year." (The Economist)
All stars
Most relevant
if only more companies followed such sensible principles. employee satisfaction and productivity would go through the roof!

best book on business I've listened to!

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I like the fact they didn’t try to stretch this to an 8 hour audio book. Short and sweet!

There are quite a lot of points which are common sense, I get why they’ve included them, but wish there were more interesting ideas.

Some interesting take on how to run a sustainable business

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This is not your normal business book. Be prepared to have your ideas challenged and processes shook by a different way of thinking.

The concepts discussed in this book do go against the grain of normal business mantra - but stick with them and keep an open mind.

The performance of the script is easily the best I’ve heard too.

Beautiful rendition, not the normal business book

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Hard to remember the key points afterwards, enjoyable but not sure about her take aways.
Mainly don’t work inefficiently

Consistent message

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Great book. I suggest listening to it in the bath. You’ll emerge a better business person. I’ve worked many places where it was ‘always crazy’. For reasons I won’t go into here, I have some free time at the moment. So at 11am this morning I got in the bath and set this audiobook playing on my waterproof smart phone. (Waterproof is important, I once accidentally killed a MacBook Pro with drips, but that’s another story.)

I lined up a bottle of orange drink and a bottle of a trendy liquid food and I intended to only stop and leave the bath when one of these three things happened:
1. The book finished
2. My boiler ran out of hot water
3. I needed to urinate

Well, I finished the book. In one sitting except for a fifteen minute break around chapter 44 to think, and consume lunch, in the bath.

I discovered many things:
* Using the toilet next to the bath was no big deal and surprisingly I never relented and urinated in the bath.
* It takes longer than you think for a bath to get too cold. I only had to top up hot water after 2 and a half hours.
* Massive epiphanies about business.

Now it’s 5.30pm and I’m still in the bath. (After listening to the book I decided to stay in the bath and think about it a while, and come up with this review.)

Hello world, my name is Louie Christie and I am a software developer. I would like to get paid to work in a calm company like this book describes.

Suggestions please?

I can be contacted by all the usual channels, asynchronously, or you can tap out a message in morse code on the water pipe.

People who don’t like the title of this book need to read it.

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